Melbourne

This weekend I got the pleasure of going to Melbourne. I spent the weekend there and had a lot of fun. I am going to have a really busy last month and a half here in Australia and am going to travel around the continent quite a bit. The traveling started this week with spending Thursday to Saturday in Australia’s second biggest city of Melbourne.

Melbourne has a population of about 4.5 million people, only half a million people behind Sydney. It is known for its Victorian style buildings, the diversity within its population and being rated the most livable city in the world. Melbourne has the second highest percentage of Victorian style buildings in the world, only behind the UK itself. This is because farmers that were living in Melbourne found gold and caused a massive gold rush in the 1850’s. The gold that was found in this gold rush was then returned to the city of Melbourne. The wealthy people built the Victorian-style buildings that are still standing today often plating everything in gold detail.

Parliament building 

Today, Melbourne is a very popular city with tourists as well as a lot of friendly locals.

My first day I took a Hop on/ Hop off tour of the city and got to see it’s amazing architecture as well as explore the Cathedral, the fairy tree park, and Flagstaff Park.

This is the Fairy tree, an art installation for children depicting the lives of fairies 

I was excited to see Flagstaff because I was a bit homesick and the park even had similar trees to home. Melbourne is a beautiful city, however after an exhausting day of exploring I grabbed some food in Chinatown and headed to my hostel where I crashed.

The next day I got up bright and early and went a tour of the Great Ocean Road with Go West Tours. Our tour driver was fantastic and was very knowledgeable about the Great Ocean Road, Melbourne, and Australia in General. He was also really happy and funny. This made the tour great. The Great Ocean Road is a WWI monument built during the depression by the WWI veterans themselves. After the war, the soldiers needed work so they were paid in beer and housing and built a road connecting a lot of the townships on the Melbourne Coast.

The water was really that blue 

This became used as tourists mostly in order to go see the 12 apostles. On the way, we made several stops to see the beautiful coastline, surfing towns, live koalas,

and Mait’s rest (A beautiful protected Eucalyptus forest).

I know this looks right out of Lord of the Rings. No, I did not see any elves

The trip was beautiful and the driver gave some great stories about the history of the area, the wildlife, and other funny stories that corresponded with the trip. He also had very punny music what were all mostly about roads. All of these places were beautiful but none of them compared to the beauty of the 12 Apostles or the shipwreck areas.

This is where the Shipwreck happened

The Apostles are limestone figures that are created by water washing against the cliffs and slowly wearing a hole in the rock and breaking it off from the mainland to make these pillar/ island structures just off the coast and fun fact there aren’t even 12.They believe that when they were first named there were 12 but at the moment there are only 9.

Look I am holding one

The water has been tearing apart the apostle and constantly making more. In one hundred years from now, there would be 100 apostles or as little as 3, it all just depends on how the water washes against the rocks.

It was truly one of the prettiest places I have ever been

After that, I got to put my feet into the Southern ocean and see the site Australia's most famous shipwreck. For dinner, I had some great Chinese food and then headed home.

Sticking my feet in the very cold southern ocean 

Ta da!

The next day, I got up early and caught a ride to the Puffing Billy Train about an hour out of Melbourne.

Puffing Billy Train 

The Puffing Billy Train was originally created to carry lumber down the mountain but now is just a fun thing to ride for the tourists. I got to feed some wild birds and meet some great new friends and then we all got to ride the Puffing Billy Train.

Feeding the Cockatoos

I met a lot of great people on this trip including Amy from London and Liam from Vietnam. I got to share stories with both and get to know them better. They made this trip a million times, better.

After the train ride, I got on a different bus and headed to Phillip’s Island to watch the Penguin Parade. Our first stop was seeing Churchill Island and their working sheep ranch. It was cool to see the Australian shepherd at work as I have an Aussie Shepherd of my own waiting for me back in the states.

We headed to the Penguin Parade. Once a day 13,000 Penguins leave the southern waters and head on land to their burrows. The leaving of the ocean and heading to their burros attracts people from all over the world to see Little Penguins (Australian native penguins) make their march. They were so cute. They ran all over the place and their calls could be heard across the area. It was truly an indescribable feeling seeing these little creatures come home. I spent nearly an hour out in the cold air watching these little guys run from burrow to burrow as they prepare for winter. It was honestly one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

You are not allowed to take pictures in the park (shhh I snuck this little beauty)

I loved my trip to Melbourne. It was one of the coolest trips I have ever taken and this is only the beginning of the massive amount of travels that I will be taking in the future.

Museum/ The Olympic Park

So last weekend was really one of my last free weekends in Sydney. I have a ton of trips coming up in the next couple of weeks including a trip to Melbourne which I will post about on Sunday. I also have finals right around the corner and have been studying like crazy in preparation for those finals. So, this was one of my last free weekends in Sydney and I wanted to make the most of it.

Last Thursday, I went to the Australian Museum in Sydney. The museum was one of the first in Australia and has a focus on Indigenous animals as well as people and some geological significant parts of Australia.

You first walk into a massive room that is filled with stuffed native and foreign animals.

There are all kinds of animals including a stuffed Tasmanian tiger that was hunted to extinction in 1936.

Stuffer Tasmanian tiger

This beautiful animal I researched before coming over to Australia still rumored to be alive but the only way to see this beast at the moment is in museums and stuffed.

The museum also focuses on indigenous art and their culture. I got to see native boomerangs which obviously look different than the boomerangs that you can find in gift shops. I even got to hear about the aboriginal story of the beginning of the ocean.

This is called a Ghost net. It was a fishing net which the aboriginals have turned into art. 

The museum had dinosaurs that were native to the Australian land and butterflies that are native to this area as well as the biggest mineral collection I have ever seen.

I love all of these things so I really was in heaven in this museum.

On Sunday, I decided to visit the Olympic park. Sydney hosted the Summer Olympics in 2000 and the park is still being used today. The park is pretty large, it has a lot of really trendy restaurants, a ton of stadiums, a massive wildlife refuge, and a concert field. I didn’t really know what to expect when I went so I had no plans. I happened to go on a really cool day. There was a dog festival happening in the concert field so I first went and pet and played with the puppies.

I even got to see a tutu dog show where people were judging which dog was rocking the tutu the best. The Great Dane won. I then wandered around the stadiums and saw the many different shapes that they all were. The main stadium where the opening ceremonies took place has been converted into a rugby field and looks suspiciously like a potato chip.

I really wanted to see what the inside of the stadium looked like and they happened to be selling rugby tickets for later that day. I bought a ticket for the game which was a lot cheaper than the tickets to see sporting events in the States and then I headed over to the wildlife park and hung out in the park until the game started, watching the birds play in the water.

I know nothing about Rugby, people tell me that rugby is a mix between soccer and football but it was nothing like either sport. Like soccer the clock is continuous and the ball was shaped like a football but I couldn’t figure out how points were scored.

Most of the game I just cheered when everyone else cheered. A lot of people looked at me weird because I was cheering for both sides, but I couldn’t really figure out what was going on. I usually cheer for refs as I am a soccer ref but I couldn’t even figure out who the refs were as they were wearing very similar colors to the waterboys. I ended up rooting for the referees and the waterboys in the end. Towards the end, I started to figure out what was going on but the game was almost over. The Roosters beat the bulldogs 29-20. It was a good game… I think. The stadium was really pretty though and while I didn't know what was going on I had fun and am glad I went.

I then headed home on the train with the mass of fans who were all in good spirits and were all very friendly as they tried to explain to me how rugby works.

Zoos

So while in Sydney I have had the opportunity to go to a lot of zoos. Australia has many famous animals like the koala and the kangaroo, but in reality, Australia is home to a unique ecosystem that can't be found in any other places in the world. Which mean that you get creatures like Marsupials, that are unique to Australia. Creatures that are found here are unique only to this island so you can't really even see native animals in other zoos across the world. Getting to see a koala was a must on my to-do list and within the first week I go up close and person with some of these awesome creatures.

The first week I was here I got to go to the Sydney aquarium in Darling Harbor. I got to see some really cool marine life as I described below. Later that week, I went to Sydney wildlife zoo which houses the largest collection of Australian wildlife in Sydney. It is an indoor zoo which was weird but it was still really fun. I got to see a ton of cool animals and it was my first time petting a wallaby. I got to see a platypus. Oh, there you are, Perry!

He's a Platypus, they don't do much

I watched an echidna, an Australian hedgehog/ porcupine, eat peanut butter for nearly an hour. They have super long tongues like anteaters but really flexible fingers and they would pick up the peanut butter with their paws and lick it off with their tongues. They are just about the cutest thing in the whole world.

They also house the largest saltwater crocodile in captivity.

He's Watching you

I also have been to the Featherdale park which is a wildlife park holding koalas, kangaroos, and a ton of other native animals, a lot like the desert museum in Tucson. The cool thing about this zoo is that you can actually pet and feed the animals.

Here I got to see quotas which are really cute little rats that live in Western Australia.

The last zoo that I have visited while I have been here, has been the Taronga zoo here in Sydney with my Grandma. The Taronga zoo is a lot like out bigger zoos in the US.

It has the big animals like elephants and large cats while still having the native animals. However, while most of our zoos in the states focus on animals from Africa this zoo had a majority of their animals from Asia. This was really interesting and different for me. I have never Asian elephants or the larger cats from Asia. There was also a really cool bird show where they had native birds fly over our heads. This was really cool to see.

It uses a rock to break open the egg

I also go to see a seal show which I again had never seen before (at least that I remember). The seals were really cute and very different than I was used to seeing in places like Seaworld.

Anyway, I just wanted to highlight the zoos that I have visited and all e interesting animals that I have seen. They definitively all made the trip.

Fashion

To talk about the fashion, I first have to talk a little about the Sydney culture. As I mentioned before the city of Sydney is very diverse in its ethnicities, its food, and of course the customs. It being the perfect melting pot of the old English traditions, American pop culture, Eastern Asian immigration influence as well as other parts of Europe being a heavy influence on the culture here. While the indigenous influence isn’t as heavy here in the city, I know that in other areas of Australia, their influence adds to the diversity as well. This has a heavy impact on the fashion. Different communities have different tastes. For example, the Asian community wears a lot more neon and tend to have longer skirts. However for most of this, I am going to focus on a majority of the people that I have seen; however, just be aware that there are variations within different communities.

During the week, a lot of people dress in business clothes as we are in a city, but their business attire is very different than ours. The American business wardrobe is based on black, where it seems that the wardrobe is based in pastels and jewel tones.

More Pastels and cream colors than in the states. The shorts also are a lot less tight

The clothing isn’t as tight here in Australia. Many business women wear flowing skirts instead of tight business suit skirts. You are more likely to see heels here than in Arizona but compared to other big business cities, like New York, the dress is a lot more casual here. You are more likely to see sandals here than in New York.

For men, you see a lot more navy and browns in their outfits. Instead of black dress shoes, you will see them wear brown shoes. Other than that, a lot of the other business dress code is the same.

On the weekend you will see more beach attire, the usual sundress, flip flops (they call them thongs), and shorts. However, even their beach attire and weekend clothes are more dressed up than us. Jeans are common but never with tears and you almost never see people in yoga pants like in the states. Dresses are more common here and while there is still the occasional short short, on average the hems are longer, the tops and dresses are more modest. The high boots that are essential in Flagstaff, are practically nonexistent. Instead, ankle boots and sandals are typical.

This is the kind of outfit that you would wear on the weekend.

The American influence is still very heavy here. American TV shows can be seen on the T-shirts of a lot of the younger guys. Little Kids still fashion American logos like Nickelodeon or Disney. And some of the younger boys can even be seen wearing American football jerseys. Even in the adults, you see American pop culture plastered on their T-shirts.

The fashion is different here, but it is also a really welcome change for me. I like being able to wear longer skirts, to wear higher necklines and be part of the trend instead of going against it. It is a welcome change that I think will be seen in my wardrobe when I get back to the states.

National Parks

My Grandma left today and I am going to miss her like crazy but while she was here we go to go to some really great places including the Blue Mountains. Australia has some of the prettiest national parks in the world. The Blue Mountains are like the Grand Canyon of Australia and is only a train ride away.

The Blue Mountains 

I have been there twice, once with my amazing friends and once with my Grandma this past weekend. The first time I went. Shanley, Lizzie and I headed to the cute mountain town of Katoomba.

Shanley, Lizzie and I

We got up super early and took the train there. When we got there, we hiked along the rim, saw and played in amazing waterfalls, and even climbed down this huge staircase to go and actually be on one of the three sisters (the three massive rock formations).

The Three Sisters

It was a great time with my two best friends here in Australia. And we even got to see some things that I will never forget, like lyrebirds and a crazy amount of tourists.

Lizzie and I at the Waterfall

The second time I went to see the Blue Mountains was this past weekend with my Grandma. I have loved spending the past couple of weeks with my Grandma.

Grandma in Katoomba 

She is one of my favorite people in the whole world and to show her one of my favorite places in Sydney was fun. I love the white mountains because it reminds me of my home is Flagstaff. The weather is colder and there are more trees and the houses look like they came right out of Flagstaff. When we were there I took her to Echo’s point (where the three sisters are located).

Cable Car

Then we took the cable car over the ravine and got to see the waterfall from a different point of view.

The Waterfall from above 

As part of our cable car, we got to take a “scenic train” which turned out to be a roller coaster through a tunnel to the bottom of the Blue Mountains. My grandma doesn’t like roller coasters or tunnels but she did it for me.

The Roller Coaster

At the bottom, we got to go for a short scenic walk through the rainforest. It was really pretty to see the vines and the rainforest.

The Rainforest

It had been a coal mine back before it was a tourist trap so it was cool to see the roots of the Blue mountains. At the end of our walk, we took a cable car back up to the top and then we headed home.

The other park I was going to talk about is the Royal National Park. I went there last week as part of a field trip. It was beautiful. The river going through the park goes into a lake next to a beach that is next to the ocean.

Royal National Park

Words can’t do this park justice. We were there to do research and I spent a lot of time writing notes but I also spent a lot of time just absorbing the beauty.

Royal National Park

I loved seeing the jungle (which was very different than the blue mountains) and the beach and the river side.

Royal National park

I got to see a ton of animals there. Including a kookaburra about a foot away and some crabs eating some algae.

Kookaburra

It was so pretty there but I probably liked the Blue mountains more because it felt a lot more like home. Homesickness has been hard and being at the Blue Mountains makes me feel a little closer to home. Having my grandma be here made me feel a little closer to home.